Is Your Law Firm’s Technology Ready for the Fall Rush? 

There is a particular moment every law firm knows. Summer calendars disappear. Clients who were going to “circle back after vacation” suddenly circle back. Court dates stack up. Matters that seemed comfortably distant are now on the calendar. Someone needs a deal closed. Someone else needs documents yesterday. Billing gets more attention. Holiday schedules start complicating availability. 

And somehow, the printer chooses this week to stop cooperating. 

Welcome to the fall rush. For many law firms, the fall rush is less about one event and more about several pressures arriving at once. Post-summer activity returns. Client matters accelerate. Court and business deadlines approach. Year-end priorities come into focus. Staff availability gets tighter as the holiday season approaches. 

That puts pressure on the people, processes, and technology keeping the firm moving. A slow computer that was mildly annoying in July feels different when a filing deadline is approaching. A clumsy intake process becomes a bottleneck when new matters arrive at once. An unreliable remote connection becomes a serious problem when an attorney needs a document after hours. 

This makes late summer and early fall a smart time for a law firm technology assessment. 

The question is simple: 

If the pace picked up significantly tomorrow, would your technology help your firm absorb the work? 

Let’s put it to the test. 

Stress Test #1: Ten New Matters Arrive. What Happens Next? 

Imagine your law firm has a very good week. Calls come in. Referrals arrive. Existing clients bring additional work. Ten promising new matters need to move through intake. 

Now follow one matter through the firm. A prospective client completes an intake form. Where does that information go? 

Perhaps a staff member enters it into another system. Someone starts the conflict check. Another person creates the matter and its folders. Someone prepares and sends the engagement letter. Then the team assigns follow-up tasks. 

Now multiply that process by ten. This is where law firm technology readiness starts. It starts with workflow. 

Walk through one common matter from beginning to end: 

Inquiry → Intake → Conflict Check → Engagement → Matter Creation → Documents → Client Communication → Billing → Matter Closure 

Look closely at each handoff. Find information that employees enter more than once. Identify steps that depend on someone remembering what comes next. Look for places where your team unnecessarily downloads, re-uploads, or emails documents. 

Then ask one practical question. Which three steps create the most unnecessary work for our team? 

Start there. The solution may involve automation or better integration between your practice management, document management, billing, and client intake systems. It may simply require changing a process. 

A law firm does not always need more technology. Sometimes it needs its existing technology to work better. 

Stress Test #2: Everyone Needs the System at the Same Time 

Technology can appear perfectly adequate when demand is light. 

Fall can expose what happens when attorneys and staff need the same systems at the same time. 

Documents are syncing. Attorneys are accessing large files. Staff are working inside the practice management system. Video meetings are underway. Remote employees are connected. Phones are busy. This is when small performance issues become productivity problems. 

Listen for comments your team has learned to accept: 

“It always takes a while to open.” 

“You sometimes have to log in twice.” 

“Don’t do that when you’re working remotely.” 

“That computer freezes when too much is open.” 

These comments are useful clues. Employees often adapt to technology problems rather than continue reporting them. 

Before the busy season, ask everyone one question. What technology problem wastes the most time during your average week? 

Collect the answers and look for patterns. Focus first on the issues that affect the most people or interrupt the most important work. 

This simple exercise can reveal aging hardware, network problems, software configuration issues, training gaps, and inefficient workflows. 

Stress Test #3: An Attorney Needs a Critical File at 9:47 P.M. 

They’re home. They may be traveling. They need a document for tomorrow. 

Can they access it quickly and securely? 

Secure remote work is now an important part of law firm IT infrastructure. Attorneys and staff may work from offices, homes, courthouses, client locations, airports, and hotels. 

The American Bar Association’s 2024 Legal Technology Survey found that 73% of firms use cloud-based legal tools. Document management and practice management applications are among the areas seeing significant adoption.  

That makes cloud security, access management, and remote-work reliability important parts of a law firm’s technology strategy. Test the remote experience yourself. Have someone work outside the office and complete several normal tasks. Open a matter. Find a document. Access email. Join a meeting. Upload a file. Use the practice management system. Document anything that feels slow, confusing, or unreliable.  

Pay particular attention to workarounds. If the approved method is difficult, employees may find an easier method that creates security or compliance concerns. Also, confirm that your IT team properly secures and manages firm devices. Remote access should remain reliable without weakening your security controls. 

Stress Test #4: The Perfect Phishing Email Arrives on the Worst Possible Day 

It’s late Thursday afternoon. An attorney has a deadline tomorrow. Their inbox is overflowing. A client is waiting for an answer. Then an email arrives: 

Updated documents attached. Please review before tomorrow’s hearing. 

The sender looks familiar. This is where law firm cybersecurity meets human behavior. Busy people move quickly. That can make phishing, credential theft, malicious attachments, and fraudulent requests harder to spot. 

The ABA’s 2024 Legal Technology Survey reported that 60% of firms had implemented formal cybersecurity policies. The ABA also identified phishing and ransomware as continuing threats to law firms. (americanbar.org) 

Before fall gets busy, review your firm’s core security controls. Confirm that multifactor authentication protects critical accounts. Check endpoint protection and patching. Review email security. Confirm that employees use approved methods for sharing sensitive documents. 

Then review user access. Look for former employees, contractors, vendors, old administrator accounts, shared accounts, and employees whose roles have changed. Remove access that users no longer need. 

Finally, make sure employees know exactly what to do when something looks suspicious. Reporting should be easy and fast. A person who suspects a phishing attempt should not have to figure out whom to contact. 

Good legal cybersecurity should support the practice of law without making attorneys responsible for becoming cybersecurity experts. 

Stress Test #5: Your Main System Goes Down Monday at 9:06 A.M. 

Pick the system your firm would least like to lose. Now imagine it is unavailable. 

Perhaps it’s your practice management system. Maybe it’s document management, email, internet access, or your phone system. 

What happens during the first 30 minutes? Who gets called? Who alerts employees, and how? Can attorneys find critical deadlines? Can staff access essential client information? Can the firm continue working? 

Most importantly: How long would it take to restore normal operations? 

This is where law firm disaster recovery and business continuity planning become important. Having backups is only part of the answer. Your firm needs to know it can restore them. 

The ABA has specifically recommended periodic testing of backups. A successful backup report provides limited comfort if the firm cannot restore the data when it is needed. (americanbar.org) 

Before the busy season, schedule a test restore using a sample of important data. Confirm that your team can recover it, record how long the process takes, and make sure more than one person understands the recovery procedure. 

Then identify your most critical systems and determine how long the firm can realistically function without each one. Those answers should guide your law firm business continuity plan. 

Stress Test #6: Someone at Your Firm Is Already Using AI. Do You Know How? 

An attorney may use generative AI to summarize information. A staff member might use it to improve an email. Someone may be experimenting with legal research, transcription, contract analysis, or drafting. Your firm needs to understand how those tools are being used. 

The American Bar Association addressed this directly in Formal Opinion 512 on Generative Artificial Intelligence Tools. The opinion explains that lawyers using generative AI must consider professional obligations involving competence, client confidentiality, communication, supervision, candor, and fees. (americanbar.org) 

That makes AI governance for law firms a practical issue. Start by finding out which tools people use. Then establish clear rules around approved AI platforms, confidential information, client data, verification of AI-generated work, supervision, and employee training. Give attorneys and staff examples. Explain what information should never be entered into an unapproved public AI tool. Show employees where approved tools can help. Make clear that attorneys and staff must appropriately review AI-generated information before relying on it. 

The goal is a usable law firm AI policy that employees understand and can follow during a busy workday. 

Stress Test #7: You Own Good Technology. Is Your Team Using It? 

Many firms already have capable technology. The problem may be adoption. 

One employee knows a shortcut that saves 20 minutes. Another has created a useful automation. One attorney uses templates effectively. Another recreates documents manually. That creates inconsistent productivity across the firm. 

Before buying another application, review the technology you already pay for. 

Ask employees two questions: 

• Which feature do you wish everyone knew how to use? 

• Which repetitive task feels like it should be automated? 

Use those answers to identify training opportunities. Then choose two or three common tasks and create a standard process for each. Record a short training session or document the steps so employees have something simple to reference later. Small improvements can add up quickly when those tasks are performed hundreds of times each year. 

Stress Test #8: Your Busiest Week Meets Your Shortest Staff 

Then Thanksgiving appears on the calendar. Then December. Attorneys take time off. Staff take vacations. Clients have their own year-end deadlines. 

Ask yourself: Can an important process continue when the person who normally handles it is unavailable? 

Look at billing, client intake, conflict checks, calendar management, document preparation, reporting, system administration, and other essential workflows. 

Identify any process that only one person understands. Then document it. 

Make sure appropriate backup personnel have the access and training they need. Store procedures somewhere employees can find them. Test the process by having the backup person perform it. 

That is practical business continuity planning for law firms. Your technology should help preserve institutional knowledge and make essential work repeatable. 

A 30-Minute Law Firm Technology Readiness Assessment 

You don’t need a six-month transformation project to identify your biggest technology risks. Bring together a managing partner, firm administrator or operations leader, and your internal or outsourced IT resource. Spend 30 minutes discussing five areas. 

1. Capacity: Ask what would happen if workload increased significantly next week. Identify the system, device, or process most likely to struggle. 

2. Productivity: Identify the three most common technology frustrations employees experience. Look for repetitive tasks and unnecessary manual data entry. 

3. Cybersecurity: Confirm MFA, endpoint protection, patching, secure file sharing, employee access, and security awareness. Review who currently has access to critical systems. 

4. Business Continuity: Verify your backups. Perform a test restore. Confirm who employees contact during an outage or security incident. Identify the systems the firm cannot function without. 

5. Technology Governance: Review remote access, software adoption, employee training, vendor access, and AI usage. Make sure policies reflect how attorneys and staff actually work today. 

At the end of the meeting, choose three priorities to address before the fall workload peaks. Assign an owner and target date to each one. 

That turns a technology discussion into an action plan. 

Don’t Let Busy Season Find the Weak Link 

A fall technology review does not need to become a major IT project. Its purpose is to find friction while you still have time to fix it. That might mean strengthening cybersecurity, testing backups, replacing an unreliable computer, improving remote access, connecting systems, documenting a process, training employees, or establishing clear rules for AI. 

Start with the problems that could disrupt client service, expose sensitive information, or prevent attorneys and staff from working. Then work down the list. 

Because when a client is waiting and a deadline is approaching, nobody wants to hear: 

“The system is down.” 

“I can’t get into it.” 

“Only Sarah knows how to do that.” 

“I thought it was backed up.” 

Or the phrase that should make every firm administrator nervous: 

“We’ve always done it this way.” 

Your fall workload will put your technology to the test. It is better to run that test on your own terms. 

Is Your Firm Ready for the Rush? 

A few small technology gaps can create much bigger problems when workloads increase. Finding them early gives your firm time to strengthen what matters most. 

Klik Solutions can help you identify technology risks, reduce everyday friction, and make sure your systems are ready to support your team when things get busy. Let’s talk about your firm’s technology readiness before the fall rush hits your firm. 

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